Meet Our Kids 2011
No one tells the story of a hospital experience better than the
child who went through it. Here are just some of those stories from
children who participated in Radiothon and our annual WMAR-ABC2 Special
for Johns Hopkins Children's Center in 2011.
Bradley Gets a New Heart after Viral Myocarditis
In 2008, 7-year-old Bradley had a viral infection that affected his heart, but he recovered fairly quickly. However, a few months later, he developed a full-blown inflammation of the heart muscle called myocarditis. What ensued was a whirlwind of events taking place too quickly to process fully. Bradley’s myocarditis caused him to have an irregular heartbeat and his doctors determined he would need a pacemaker to regulate his heart rhythm.
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Brave Heart: Bridget's New Life after Dilated Cardiomyopathy
Two-year-old Bridget Diveley was a perfectly healthy toddler until September 2009 when she suddenly developed dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition in which the heart becomes enlarged and cannot pump efficiently. Her doctors believed it was triggered by a random viral infection.
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Apert Syndrome: Brooke's Story
Brooke Leann Bell was born with Apert syndrome in 1996. Apert syndrome is a genetic condition that occurs in 1out of 160,000 to 200,000 newborns. Its most obvious physical features include cranial stenosis (prematurely fused cranial sutures), a retruded mid-face and fused fingers and toes, called syndactyly.
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Danny’s Battle Against Brain Vessel Malformations
Danny Kirby started developing breathing problems shortly after he was born in August, 2008. He was put on a ventilator to help him breathe better. His initial diagnosis was pulmonary hypertension, or abnormally high pressure in the blood vessels of the lungs.
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Surgeons Restore Desirae's Badly Injured Arm
In October 2010, cheerleader Desirae Myers fell from the top of a pyramid formation during practice and broke her arm.She was rushed to the local ER, where her mom is a trauma tech, and where doctors quickly realized they were dealing with much more than a simple fracture. The bone was not only broken but dislocated, causing compartment syndrome.
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Cornelia De Lange Syndrome: Fletcher's Journey
Fletcher Presgraves was born with Cornelia De Lange syndrome, a rare condition resulting in multiple developmental and medical complications. Because of the complex nature of his condition, which affects several organs and organ systems, Fletcher is being followed by experts from various pediatric subspecialties, including cardiology, pulmonology, urology, ENT, neurology and ophthalmology.
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ROHHAD Syndrome: Medical Detectives Solve the Puzzle of Haven's Condition
Haven Fowler was born a healthy baby. She remained so until the age of two and a half when she began to gain weight very rapidly, gaining 40 pounds over eight months. She also started having unusual neurological symptoms, including hallucinations, sleep-eating and sleepwalking, irritability and profuse sweating.
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Healing Hayden's Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome
Ali Lazorchak became seriously ill one month before her baby was due. She was hospitalized and induced, bringing baby Hayden into the world one month early. If you ask his parents, they'll tell you this was all a blessing in disguise, because a life-threatening heart condition was discovered in the newborn in the nick of time.
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Jake Does His Part in Quest for Food Allergy Cure
Jake was born with allergies to milk, eggs and tree nuts. After years of painstaking avoidance of all foods that contain them, Jake came to Hopkins Children’s to see allergist Robert Wood. Jake ended up in one of Wood’s groundbreaking clinical trials on food allergies.
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Kyle in the Swim after a Heart Transplant
Kyle Atras was three months old when his mother noticed that he had trouble eating and was losing weight. After a visit to the pediatrician, a referral to a nearby hospital and a chest X-ray, the Atras family received devastating news. Kyle had an enlarged heart, a condition called dilated cardiomyopathy.
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Matthew's Rare Brain Tumor
Matthew Henry has been through a lot in his three years of life. He's had biopsy surgery in a part of his brain most surgeons won't touch, and he's living with an extremely rare brain tumor. But three generations of women in the family are making every day special for this loving little boy.
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Sarah's Remarkable Story of Survival
Most of the patients at Hopkins Children's don't plan to come to the hospital. They wake up thinking it will be a day like any other, but somehow they end up in the emergency room. For the Wheatley family of Monkton, a typical fall morning ride to school ended with a horrible collision with a truck that brought young Sarah to Hopkins Children's and changed her family forever.
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Innovative Treatment Ends Tyler's Seizures
When it comes to epilepsy, Hopkins Children's doctors know early diagnosis and immediate treatment could mean the difference between managing the disease with medication or actually curing it with something as seemingly simple as a diet. No one knows this better than Tyler Zeman's family. He was perfectly healthy until he was six months old and everything changed.
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Wyatt Survives Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia
Wyatt was born in October 2007 with congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH), a condition marked by a partly missing diaphragm — the muscle separating the chest from the abdomen — which allows the stomach, intestines, liver, kidneys and spleen to move up in the chest cavity and push on the heart and lungs. The resulting pressure on the heart and lungs disrupts breathing and circulation.
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Zoe Beats Leukemia
When Christian Boone was in her second trimester of her second pregnancy, she made a frightening discovery. She found a lump in her breast. After a lot of research and soul searching, she and her husband, Vincent, opted for chemotherapy. She eventually gave birth to a healthy, beautiful baby girl, but the Boone family's battles with cancer were far from over.
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